A woman walking along a beach in Australia stumbled upon a message in a bottle that was written 132 years ago!
Tonya Illman spotted the remarkable object sitting in the sand near Australia's Wedge Island and was intrigued by its somewhat unique appearance.
Upon closer inspection, she realized that the bottle contained a note inside and the contents of the missive are rather amazing as the note was written in June of 1886.
A subsequent investigation into the letter, which was written in German, revealed that the bottle was part of an experiment to study ocean currents.
Since the missive contained the name of the ship from which it was tossed, a maritime expert in Germany was able to confirm the details surrounding the origin of the bottle, which was one of thousands used in the experiment.
To that end, it would seem that Illman was not alone in discovering these 'experimental' bottles as more than 650 have been found over the years, although the last one to be found was back in 1934.
According to historians, the incredible 132-year-old age of the bottle smashed the previous record for such a find, which was a mere 108 years.
Source: The Guardian